Monday, February 07, 2005

Now what?

What am I supposed to do now? Write a description of events? I am confused. My mind is fuzzy. I slept well, which is surprising, but not. Not, because I was physically exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed with a desire to completely avoid thinking about what happened.

Perplexing, disheartening, unnerving.

Where did happy and fun go? Right out the window. Damn it. I HATE this. I don’t want things to be so complicated. What have I done? Yet, I know it wasn’t me. It wasn’t all me. It wasn’t even half me. It was me agreeing and wanted to go along, even though I knew, at least a little bit, that we were rushing and taking things much too quickly to a much too serious place.

And so, what happened? Major league freak out on his part. Totally scared, mixed-up and discombobulated. Sick to his stomach. Feeling terrible. Not wanting leave, but not wanting to stay. Chin wavering. Tears rolling down cheeks. I couldn’t believe it. Me wanting to cry but not. Saying he felt the same and it would be stupid to leave. Asking when it was ok to break up. Me thinking what, do you need permission? Me saying when you are not happy, you have to break up. When the relationship is making life less happy instead of just a tiny bit better. Wondering what the hell is happening? Why is he so upset? Saying you must care or you wouldn’t be so upset. Him nodding. Saying you are so pretty. Holding me. Telling me we would still talk the next day. All understandings are shot to hell. All certainty is gone. Nothing is ever easy. I just don’t understand why things got so complicated. I blamed him and he agreed it was his fault. That he had been so sure and made me go too fast. I said he didn’t force me to do anything, that he may have persuaded me, but I agreed and I could have stopped things, slowed things. I could have, and I didn’t. But I did feel a little betrayed. He promised that everything would be fine. He was sure. But no one can keep a promise like that. No one can control their feelings and always be sure of being sure.

Is there any sense in which this kind of emotional moment could be considered a good thing? Or is it a doom moment? That’s what I don’t know. He said, you’re not losing me. I said, I don’t believe you. He said, I’m here, I came here to talk to you. I didn’t do this on the phone. And then he told a story about dating a girl he really liked. She called him at his cousin’s wedding and said she was scared and they had to break up. And they were supposed to get engaged two weeks later. He says, I didn’t do that, I didn’t call you. I came over to talk to you. I’m thinking, does that mean he wants to break up? I said, you had to come over to bring me that stuff (I’d left some groceries at his place…long story). But I guess he didn’t have to stick around. I tried to think what he meant…how applying that story to our situation didn’t spell the end. What I came up with: he wasn’t running away or avoiding me by having a phone call. He wasn’t breaking up with me because he was scared. He was scared but he was talking to me instead of running away. This must be how he saw it or he wouldn’t have told the story.

What was the substance of what he said? That he needed to get back to normal. That we’d spent too much time together and were fighting too much. The fighting was objectively very little, but must have felt huge to him. It was not insignificant, but a result of things being a little off—like all fighting is.

Here is the weekend run down:
Friday: we had plans to do something, mostly likely go to the movies. The movies were reject because of the timing. He came over around 7:30 and we went out for Thai food. Dinner was fine, but I got upset with him for asking a “stupid” question in the middle of a story I was telling about a friend of mine. He was asking why I thought she was crazy. I started talking about her, trying to figure out the answer. I then said how she’d been a really good friend to me back in grad school and we used to go to dinner all the time. He said, “At Smithy’s?” I said, “What?” He kept asking. I asked him why he cared about that and what was he talking about. He said it was a place in Raleigh. I said we were in Chapel Hill. For some reason I got upset. It was a really typical bad handling kind of thing for me. I overreacted. I don’t know why, but it really shut me down. It made me feel like he wasn’t paying attention to the important things. I got quiet. He said, more than once, wow, that really upset you. I said, yes. He couldn’t let it go, which was bad, but I couldn’t blame him. We were finished with dinner, he paid, and we left. It took a while to shake the bad feeling that our argument, or whatever it was, had created. I knew he wasn’t happy with me. Still, we went back to my place and things seemed to calm down. We watched the second half of the movie we’d watched the first half of the weekend before. We enjoyed it. (The 39 Steps—there is no way not to like that movie.) Then we went to sleep. There was only a moderate amount of sleeping. There was more intimacy than on prior occasions. There was some insistence on his part. Me saying I’m scared. Him reassuring me. Him being precipitous. Me not minding too much.

I had originally had some plans for Saturday during the day, but they were canceled. I told Jake and later he said, how did you feel when you found out you didn’t have to go on Saturday? I said I was happy because I could spend the whole day with him. He hugged me and said I was sweet. He actually had made plans with some friends of his for lunch on Saturday but said we could go together, which seemed fun to me. That didn’t end up happening. Instead, we got going very slowly, eventually got to his place where he showered and shaved. Then we went to lunch alone and he took me to Trader Joe’s. We ended up having a quick dinner with his friends and watching a movie at his place alone after. We went to sleep for real this time. However, there was some fighting in the night. I wanted something, he wanted sleep. I left the room. I came back to the room. I had a lot of negative talk in my head. I knew I was being crazy. In the morning, we were still arguing, I was trying to tell him how I felt—rejected. He said I hadn’t been. I said I knew. He was still tired. I had to go—I had book group. We had plans to watch the Superbowl later at his friend’s house. I was on my way home after book group and he called me. He didn’t want me to go to the party. He came over with my groceries. I said are you breaking up with me? He said no. He cried. He declared his need to get back to normal and be alone. He said we’d spent too much time together. He said he was going through something. He said he was scared. See above.